


Fallout

by Jade4813



Series: Zoey's Extraordinary Confession Series [1]
Category: Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:53:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23257225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade4813/pseuds/Jade4813
Summary: After the embarrassing incident at Simon and Jessica’s engagement party, Zoey knows she needs to clear the air with Simon, but she keeps getting distracted by memories of That Song.
Relationships: Zoey Clarke/Max, Zoey Clarke/Max Richman
Series: Zoey's Extraordinary Confession Series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1676923
Comments: 11
Kudos: 100





	Fallout

**Author's Note:**

> For Lizzie.

  
  


Zoey tried to keep her mind on work when she headed into the office the following Monday. She’d been too wrapped up helping take care of her dad over the weekend to spend too much time wallowing in confusion and self-pity, but now it was Monday and there was nothing to distract her from thoughts of Max. No, she corrected herself firmly. To distract her from the memory of inadvertently ruining Simon and Jessica’s engagement party. Things with Max were fine! They were always fine! Nothing to obsess over there!

But when the elevator doors slid open and she saw Simon and Max chatting together at the bread bar, it was the sight of the latter that had her ducking her head and scooting quickly towards her desk.

She could do this. It was a totally normal day. Okay, sure, at some point, she was going to have to face Simon. Maybe buy Jessica a gift basket or something. Surely that was the right thing to do when one broke up an engagement party by setting fire to the photographic focal point and accidentally letting the bride know about one’s crush on the future groom and his clandestine – if totally innocent – nocturnal visit to her apartment? Then again, all things considered, she highly doubted Jessica would welcome such a gift. Unless she could throw it at Zoey’s head, of course.

She pretended not to notice when Max walked back to his desk, throwing her a smile as he slid back into his seat. Instead, she tried to focus on her inevitable confrontation with Simon as she skimmed through the string of e-mails on her computer with sightless eyes. _Sorry for what happened at your engagement party_. No, that was too vague. _Sorry for telling your fiancé that you came to my apartment the other night. And that I had a crush on you. And for that minor act of arson._ Too blunt?

 _God, Max looks good today. Has he always looked this good?_ Wait. No. She wasn’t supposed to be thinking about Max. She was supposed to be thinking about Simon. Simon and her crushing humiliation. Simon and her terrible, horrible, no good, very bad behavior at his engagement party. The party celebrating him getting married to another woman. Which she had ruined.

Which was definitely the thing she should focus on right now and not Max and how good he looked in that black button up. She glance at him out of the corner of her eye. No, it had a bit of a pattern to it. A subtle plaid pattern? Had he worn that shirt before? Maybe it was new, courtesy of Mo. Who’d had Max shirtless in his –

Wait. No. Not Max. Simon. She was thinking about _Simon_.

_“And when I come home, yes I know I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be the man who comes back home with you. But I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more…”_

The song carried over to her so softly, it took a moment for them to register. But when they finally did, she jerked so hard, her mouse went flying to the ground with a loud clatter.

Max looked up abruptly at the sound of her mouse breaking into pieces, a tiny line forming a crease between his brows. “Zoey? You okay?”

“Who, me? I’m fine!” she lied.

His expression of concern didn’t waver. “Is it your dad? Did something else happen…?”

For the first time in what felt like days, she felt her face melt into a genuine smile at his thoughtfulness. She might be noticing a lot of things about Max for the first time lately – _a lot_ of things (like had his hair always looked that good, or was it a new haircut?) – but that thoughtfulness had been something she’d always loved about him.

Loved? Liked. That she _liked_ about him. Because they were just friends, regardless of the feelings that were revealed in the songs she kept hearing him sing. And on that note…

“He’s fine. I mean, he’s still recovering, and we don’t really know if he’s in pain or not. But using the computer seemed to be a little easier for him yesterday than it was the day before, so I think he’s getting better.” Swooping down to pick up her mouse, she tried to keep her tone light as she asked, “Hey, did you hear, uh, singing a minute ago?” That was the problem with her new “superpower.” It could be almost impossible to tell if the songs she heard were real or if they were just going on in her mind.

Max chuckled, the sound carrying to her as she stretched to scoop up a battery that had skittered just out of reach. “All right, so I don’t have the best voice. But if your eardrums start to bleed, it’s your fault, you know.”

Zoey startled at his words, slamming her head against the bottom of her desk before jerking upright in her chair.

“Oh, my god, that sounded like you hit pretty hard. Do you need ice or -”

“I’m fine!” she yelped, barely feeling her aching head through the rising panic in her chest. “My fault? I-that’s-wh-what do you mean, my fault?” she demanded in a voice a full octave above her usual tone.

Max’s look of concern only grew more pronounced. “Well, you were humming it.”

“I was?” She was? “Oh.” That wasn’t good. “I didn’t realize.” She was supposed to be thinking about _Simon_ and her abject humiliation! Not _Max_! Not that song!

“Zoey, are you really okay? You’re acting kind of weird.”

When he stood and started to scoot around the desk towards her, she panicked. “I have to talk to Simon!” she blurted, jumping to her feet.

Max’s look of concern morphed into a sympathetic smile. “Oh, right. Of course. I wasn’t thinking. Listen, I know what happened at his party was…well, it wasn’t great. But just remember that I’m always here for you if you need anything. Anything at all. Okay?”

 _“Always.”_ The memory of the moment they’d shared the other night was like a punch to the gut.

“Uh huh!” she replied brightly with a nod as she fled towards Simon’s office. She was going to have to talk to him about his engagement party anyway. She’d just hoped to put the conversation off for another…eight hours or so. Forever would have been good, too, but she would have been happy to settle for eight hours.

She tried not to think too hard about the fact she was apparently more comfortable with the thought of talking about her failed, party-ruining crush on Simon than confront whatever the heck was going on between her and her best friend, Max.

* * *

_“And when I’m dreaming, well I know I’m gonna dream about the time when I’m with you…”_

“That song again?” Max asked over her shoulder as he grabbed a bowl. “You know, I never took you for a fan of the Proclaimers.”

She threw a tight smile over her shoulder at him and forced herself to stay put. She had to get a hold of herself. Every time Max came near, she kept finding excuses to flee in the opposite direction. To Joan’s office. To the bathroom. To the bread bar. If she ate any more carbs for the day, she was either going to have to run a marathon or go into hibernation.

“Must have heard it somewhere and got it stuck in my head, I guess,” she replied lamely. Truth be told, she hadn’t realized she was singing it. Again. For easily the fifth time that day. At least.

“You know, I always thought they were singing five thousand miles instead of one thousand. Which doesn’t even make any sense because –”

“Max. We need to talk.” The words were out of her mouth before she even had time to think them through, but maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it really was time to clear the air between the two of them. She simply couldn’t go on like this.

She reached out and grabbed his arm, about to pull him aside so they could talk in private. But when she felt his muscles through the fabric of his shirt, she knew it was a mistake. See? She was a mess. A few weeks ago, she probably wouldn’t have even noticed the muscles in his arms! Now just touching him reminded her of the sight of him standing half-naked in Mo’s living room. With his muscles and the curve of his skin above his hipbones and his…and his nipples.

She had to stop thinking about his nipples. There was no way she was going to survive the conversation ahead if she kept thinking about his nipples.

Yanking her hand away, she jerked her head to the side, silently indicating that he should follow her. There was a faint hint of laughter in his voice as he did so, asking, “Well, this seems ominous. Are we staging a coup? Because we have been out of Cocoa Puffs for weeks now, and I’m down with overthrowing the Man if it means we get more.” Tucked as much into an alcove as they could get in an open-concept space, Zoey spun around just in time to see the corner of his mouth lift up as he shrugged and threw a conspiratorial glance over at Joan’s office. “Well…the Woman, I guess.”

“This isn’t about Cocoa Puffs,” she said firmly, as a traitorous, cowardly voice in her mind wondered why it couldn’t be. She could just pretend this entire thing was about sugar-coated breakfast foods and carry on with life as usual. With Max singing the occasional love song to her in her mind. Keeping this secret from him would be easier, but it wouldn’t be fair, so she had no idea why she continued with, “And everyone knows Frosted Flakes are better anyway.”

Pursing his lips slightly, Max cocked his head to the side and squinted down at her. “Mmmm…are they, though? Because Cocoa Puffs are -”

“Max, I have a superpower!” she blurted suddenly, cutting him off. Just speaking the words aloud to him, she felt an enormous weight lift off her shoulders.

He didn’t respond the way she expected him to. He chuckled, though the sound was a little uncertain. “Okay, well…this isn’t the way I expected the conversation to go, but I’ll roll with it. Is it, um, a cereal-related superpower? Have you trapped the Trix rabbit and are forcing him to do your bidding?”

She shook her head and scooted as far back into the alcove as she could. “It has nothing to do with cereal,” she hissed. “And I’m being serious!”

A beat of silence fell between them as she tried to read the expression on his face. It was a mixture of confusion and…concern? Pity? Uncertainty? Alarm? “Okay,” he finally offered, drawing out the word only a little longer than necessary. “So what is your superpower?”

“I hear people’s thoughts. Through song. I mean, I hear them singing even though they aren’t actually singing. But the songs are about their deepest, most private feelings. Things they would never share with anyone.”

She still couldn’t make sense of the expression on his face, but he neither ran away nor called a hospital to have her committed. So she assumed that was a good sign. Instead, he asked, “Like what?”

Zoey pressed her lips together and tried to think of how to respond. She really should have thought this conversation through. She’d spent all morning trying to figure out how to talk to Simon, and she hadn’t spent so much as thirty seconds thinking through her confession to Max before blurting it out to him in the middle of work.

“Well,” she began slowly, “I heard Joan singing Satisfaction before, uh, before everything that happened with Charlie. I heard Mo sing about something he was going through, but it’s not really my place to tell you about that. And I have a downstairs neighbor who’s agoraphobic. I kept hearing her through the door, singing about the Bermuda, so we’re working on ways to help her with her fear so she can go on her dream trip. Oh, and I once heard an entire coffee shop break into I Wanna Dance With Somebody, which was pretty weird.”

Max blew out a long breath. “Okay.”

She almost couldn’t believe it. “Okay? That’s it?”

“Well, it’s a lot to process. I need to think about this a little.” Then, attempting to lighten the mood, he joked, “I’ve never known someone with a superpower before. Does this mean you’re going to start wearing spandex and running around the city taking down criminals through song?”

Her laugh was breathless and shaky as she scrunched her nose and shook her head. “It’s not really that kind of superpower. And I understanding needing some time to process. Trust me, it took a little getting used to for me, too. Maybe we can talk about it more later. After work.” That didn’t sound like she was asking him on a date, did it? Because it totally wasn’t a date! “I mean, all of us. You. Me. Mo. Mo knows too, so…”

“Sure. Sounds good,” he agreed, moving to return to his desk.

The sigh of relief Zoey had been about to release froze in her throat when he paused after a single step and turned slowly back around to face her. “Wait. Have you – have you heard me sing anything?” His face had been inscrutable before, but now his expression was guarded, making it impossible to know what he was thinking. Not that she couldn’t guess.

“What, you? No! Of course not!” she tried to lie, but when she met his eyes, her shoulders sagged and she admitted morosely, “Yes. Once or twice. Well, three times. Okay, four. I guess.”

“What did you hear me sing?”

It was such a simple question. Too bad it wasn’t a simple answer. “Well, um, one was opera. After you had sex. With Autumn.”

The muscle in his jaw relaxed a fraction, and he almost managed to force a smile as he replied, “Okay, that is strange. I don’t even listen to opera.”

“I know, right? So, you see? No big deal! We really don’t need to talk about it any more that that, actually so -”

She wished she could scoot around him, but having backed herself into an alcove, the only way she could get around him would be to touch him and that was _definitely_ a bad idea right now.

“But you said I sang four songs. What else did you hear?”

Of course. She should have realized he wouldn’t let her off the hook so easily. The problem was, the other songs weren’t so easily shrugged off and waved away. The other songs were about her. She wished she’d never said anything to him, because it might have been awkward to be around him with this secret in between her and her best friend, but telling him the truth could be catastrophic.

“Well,” she began, her voice desperate as she dragged out the word for several seconds. “I don’t really know the titles of the songs, actually,” she prevaricated.

The guarded look returned, causing her to tense up. She wasn’t used to seeing that look in his eyes and she hated it. Hated more that she had been the one to cause it. “Okay, but if you had to guess,” he pressed.

Zoey sighed in defeat. She could try to lie to him, but it would only make it worse somehow. Instead, she confessed in a heavy voice, “I Think I Love You, Sucker, and that 500 Miles song I’ve been singing all day.”

Max froze, going so still that a stiff breeze could have blown him over. “Oh. And do you have any thoughts on who or what those songs were about?”

No amount of lying would get her out of this one, so it was pointless to try. “I’m pretty sure…they were about me.”

He didn’t deny it, and she almost wished he would. If he did, she could try to pretend those songs had never happened. Their relationship could remain as it always was, and Max could stay her best friend, her rock, the one who made her laugh when she felt broken. The one she always knew she could depend on and she never, _never_ wanted to hurt. Or lose, if a romance went bad between them.

Instead, he repeated simply, “Oh.”

“Is that – is that it?” Her voice was soft and tentative. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but it hadn’t been that. “You’re not going to deny it?”

Max shoved his hands in his pockets, and a flicker of pain crossed his face before he regained control and shielded his emotions from her again. “Is there any point? You’d only hear my feelings through song again.”

“I guess – I just thought -”

He took a step toward her. Small and unsure. “So I guess now that you know how I feel…what about you? How do you – I mean, what do you want to happen next?”

She cringed at the thread of panic in her voice when she blurted, “I don’t know! I don’t know what I want, Max! This all came out of left field for me! You’re my best friend, and I didn’t expect to have this confession laid out on my doorstep like this, so I -”

“That’s unfair,” he broke in, a hard edge of anger in his voice. “I didn’t lay anything at your doorstep. I was fine with my feelings being my problem. I didn’t plan to tell you about them. I didn’t want them to get in the way of our friendship. This wasn’t my doing! It was your superpower, remember? You’ve kind of thrown me through a loop, here, and I’m just trying to deal with it.”

“I know,” she admitted flatly. Then, sighing, she tried again in a softer voice. “I know. It’s just…you’re my best friend, and I don’t want to lose you. And I just don’t know how to deal with this right now. I’m sorry. I know you deserve a better answer than that, but that’s the only answer I have right now.”

He nodded and looked away from her, shoving his hands into his pockets as he stepped back. He no longer sounded angry, but she could hear his sadness, his regret, as he tried to put things back to normal between them. “Okay. Well. When you figure out what you want…let me know.”

Even as she watched him walk away, she heard the song carry back to her and knew that this time, it really was all in her head. It was sad and slow, and the very sound of Max’s longing nearly broke her heart.

_“When the rain is blowing in your face, and the whole world is on your case, I would offer you a warm embrace. To make you feel my love. When the evening shadows, and the stars appear. And there is no one there to dry your tears. I would hold you for a million years. To make you feel my love._

_“I know you haven’t made your mind up yet. But I would never do you wrong. I’ve known it from the moment that we met; no doubt in my mind where you belong._

_I’d go hungry, I’d go black and blue. I’d go crawling down the avenue. There is nothing that I wouldn’t do. To make you feel my love.”_


End file.
